Commercial accounts for businesses on Twitter may finally make their debut next month at the company's inaugural developer conference, Chirp.
Twitter's head of product management and monetization, Anamitra Banerji, will be leading a session on commercial accounts in the afternoon at the conference. Last summer, co-founder Biz Stone told us the company was planning to launch a commercial layer over its ecosystem by year-end. They're several months behind, but it looks like it may finally be happening.
Since it's the hub in its vast network, the company may have the best sense of how many times a tweet was delivered, regardless of which partner it was sent to, such as Seesmic or Brizzly. The analytics the company will offer probably won't interfere too much with partners like CoTweet that have developed enterprise-focused Twitter clients. CoTweet chief executive Jesse Engle, who has seen much of Twitter's plans, said the company doesn't have any incentive to build workflow management tools, for example. Plus, many business-focused Twitter clients have broadened their reach to include Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace status updates.
Twitter COO Dick Costolo will also be giving a speech on monetization strategy, and we've seen hints dropped that the company's much anticipated advertising network may also be unveiled at Chirp. There hasn't been official confirmation, though. You can see the full conference schedule here.